luni, 25 mai 2009

The Bahia effect

Once upon a time, when in our little town was even less decent place to go out, drink something, have a talk with your friends, and occasionally party, someone realized that there’s a pretty thick layer of students who don’t have a steady place to go, because they don’t share the same taste with the other locals frequenters. At that time you could go the Tilos (“Not allowed”) which was usually crowded with drunk people, although it was absolutely possible to have a good conversation here, because along the drunk rockers most of the customers were intellectuals, you could often meet your teachers here. Tilos had its own unique atmosphere, with its metal and rock music, with its cheap, strong and not too sophisticated drinks, whit its late closing hour (I know a few people who sometimes went to the Tilos one day, and they went to school from there the other morning) loved by so many people, appreciated by even more, but still, it wasn’t for everyone. If you want to read more about the Tilos, visit my friends blog at ikarosz.blogspot.com. Outside the Tilos, you could go to some restaurants, where you could eat pizza and stuff, but because they closed at around 12 PM they were not ideal for nightlife. Of course there were some discos, with their house, trance and dance music which where popular among those who like this type of music.

So Bahia opened, more precisely Bahia Blue Tea House. It is true, that Bahia became great because of its frequents, but it assured the right conditions for those people: it had four big rooms, one after the other in a row. You entered at one end, where the bar was, and you could get deeper and deeper. The end of the “cave”, the last room, with leather couches, and with pretty few lights was reserved for the owner and his close circle (you were the biggest “Bahia-man” if you spent your time on the tiny balcony where you could go from the last room). The walls were usually decorated by friends of the owner with some abstract paintings which fitted the places atmosphere very well. The furniture wasn’t to expensive, in fact it was the cheapest possible: old round tables and simple chairs made of wood. Although they weren’t expensive, at some nights it was the biggest luxury to sit on a chair. At the bar you could get yourself the usual not too expensive drinks, like beer, whine, shots of strong spirits, and they even made cocktails, if you told them how to do it :). Its name being Tea House, they also served tea here: you could taste around 25 different types of tea, all of them original, not from teabags, and all of them at a really really low price. No miracle that after a few hours there you spent as much many, as you would have in a restaurant by buying a beer. If you wanted to make friends, or to do something else than talk, you went to the foosball tables (if you have no idea what that is then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foosball ). As far as I know the Bahia was the first place in town where you could play this game, and it made its effect: those who went to the Bahia from the beginnings are among the best foosball players in the word. The fact that almost everyone played the game who went there gave Csíkszereda a funny reputation: stereotypically if you are from the town, you are pretty good at this game. Of course, this may be due to that here in almost every pub you can find a foosball table, but in other towns, at least where I have been it's pretty hard to find a good one.

So what made this place so great, that even now, when like three years passed since it closed, everyone still knows where it was, even if he or she was has never been there, and no pub managed to be as popular as Bahia was. First of all, like I mentioned it was the people who went there. The pub with its alternative and drum & bass music was the home of the forming alternative people, who stereotypically listened to the music genres mentioned above, went to the Márton Áron theoretic high school or to the Nagy István arts school, practiced extreme sports (the owner was among the first to practice an x-sport) and well, smoked weed. Of course this is a stupid characterisation, there were really few who actually did all those, but it gives you and idea of the people who went there. Csíkszereda being a small town, you could be sure, that if you went there, you found someone to have a drink with (I did not say someone who you know, because you knew almost everyone), so when you had a little free time, you didn’t have to arrange anything, you just went there and had fun. In every Monday, the second and the third room was host to folk dance events, where people who knew these dances and who wanted to learn them could participate. And every now and then there was a Bahia-party. A Bahia-party is characterized by a huge crowd, you can barely move, by smoke so thick that you can feel it from the street, even see it coming out of the windows, drum & bass music and a feeling like no other. My university student sisters told me, that it was so great because when these were organized in holidays when those who studied in other towns came home, so it was again something that didn’t had to be arranged: you knew that you’ll meet all your friends there. Although officially everyone had the right to enter, there was an unwritten rule that if you weren’t a high school student you were not allowed there (of course there were some exceptions, usually little sisters and brothers, like myself), so Bahia became a symbol of maturity.

Due to financial reasons Bahia got closed. That was the time, when everyone realized truly how great place it was. Even now, after seeing fine places of bigger towns, like Temesvár, Kolozsvár, Marosvásárhely or Budapest I still say: if they’d reestablish this place in Csíkszereda, this would be my favorite pub in the whole world.